Adopting (a new life)

The process of adoption has been a rather harrowing journey.  What we thought would be something to the time of 6 to 8 months has turned into a 2 1/2 year slog.  We have had moments of joy, bouts of sorrow, but through it God has shown his grace and mercy.  As I said, we expected this to be a quick in and out, no bumps in the road and on with our life we would go.  It has not been that way.

Our journey begins in Rwanda.  Darren traveled there to hand deliver our paperwork when we found out the country was shutting down their adoption program to initiate the process of the Hague.  Scared that we would be shut out of the process, we put Darren on plane at 6am and sent him to our state capital to finish paperwork and later that day on to Washington DC.  Once in DC he went to the state department to finalize documents and then to the Rwandan embassy.  What we thought would be a day, turned out to be a weekend.  Finally, 4 days later he loaded a plane headed to Kigali.  Luckily for us we had friends living there at the time, so he at least had a place to stay and people to associate with.

In the back of our minds we thought he might come home with a little one in weeks.  He quickly realized that this was not the case when he turned in our paperwork, and they said they would contact us when the other hundred plus applications had been processed.  Saddened but refreshed that the paperwork was turned in, he returned home.  Now the wait......

Months went by without any word.  Finally we received a letter stating that we had six months to complete this process or our case would be closed.  Upon hearing this our hearts sunk.  No way could this happen to us.  We were following God's path.  He told us to adopt.  Why us?

As time moved forward, we believed that we might have an opportunity to change our paperwork and ask for a little boy.  Denied!!!!  Devastation set in.  What were we to do?  Luckily, we had not told our girls, for fear that it actually would not happen.  God seemed to know something we did not.

After this last devastating blow, we begin to look for other options/ countries that we could adopt from.  Amazingly, the very agency we were using had a new program for the DRC.  The worst country in the world according to many.  After much prayer and consideration, we made a leap of faith to change.

In between this switch, there did seem to be an opportunity to adopt from the US.  Receiving a call from my mom, stating that there was a 3 year old that might be placed for adoption, we quickly put together pictures and a basic letter stating who were.  This must have been some test from God to see if we were really ready to adopt whoever He would present to us, as this turned out to fall through also.  Changing countries seemed to be giving up and a rather large loss, and now we have lost another, right here in the US.  God what are we doing? When will this happen?  Who will it be?

Surprise!!!!!  When we changed countries, God gave us twins.  Wow, Darren only wanted one girl, not two.  What would he say?  When presented with the pictures of these girls, all he could say was yes.  Yes?  Are you sure?  Yes, God gave them to us.  Josee and Marie.

Now I wish we could say we are done.  We are not.  We are still waiting, although it is becoming less and less of a wait each day.  Please pray that we are able to get our girls soon.  Our hearts ache for them.  Our biological daughters ache for them.  Our family aches for them.